I need a break from politics! This is a baby gift for one of my ‘extra’ daughters … those daughters’ friends who feel like part of the family. It’s a different kind of quilt in two ways.

One, it’s a ‘quilt-as-you-go’ project, which allowed me to play at quilting on pieces that were small enough to turn easily on my home machine.

[FYI: “Quilting” refers to stitching through all the layers to hold them together. The method I used to create the top layer, aka the “top” hee hee, is called “piecing.” There are two other types of tops, appliqué and whole cloth.]

Two, it’s not a blanket but a floor play pad. After I finish assembling the blocks, Dearest will cut me yet another piece of batting, this time the full size plus 4″ all around. I’ll quilt the assembled, pre-quilted top to this big piece of batting and a large piece of flannel backing with simple, straight quilting through all layers, creating a thick, soft, stiffish, fun to look at and touch play pad for the floor.

The “two” part is the same as Baby Buzz’s famous quilt. His I sent out to a long-arm quilter for fancy stitching. This one, I decided to do this other way, because … well, frankly, it’s fun and also I’m broke.

The next-to-last step is to roll the outer batting then wrap the extra backing around to the front. This forms the quilt binding and also creates a really fat bumper ridge all around that keeps toys from rolling off.

The flannel backing provides some grip on carpeting. Between that and the extra stiffness, the play pad doesn’t scrunch or bunch or do otherwise tangle little ones struggling to learn those important rolling over and crawling skills.

Best of all, it’s 100% cotton, hypoallergenic and completely machine wash and dry-able. Mama Buzz tells me when she launders and returns theirs to its proper place in Buzzy Play Land, Lil Buzz just dances for joy at seeing it again. I love that!

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3 responses to “Quilt-as-you-go project”

I need a hobby, sigh 🙂 Those are gorgeous pieces, and I feel the love you’ve put into everyone of them.

For the youngsters here, some of my granny friends saved almost every tshirt their kids wore growing up, and now making quilts out of them for their grandchildren. I wish I thought of that, all those thrift store bags and memories donated.